


Janet Van Dyne's Secret

by sowhatsophie



Category: Marvel, The Avengers
Genre: Black Widow - Freeform, Captain America - Freeform, Gen, Hawkeye - Freeform, Iron Man - Freeform, ant man - Freeform, the wasp - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 02:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9945677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowhatsophie/pseuds/sowhatsophie
Summary: A short drabble about Janet and the secrets that she keeps.





	

Janet Van Dyne was excellent at keeping secrets. She could make the whole world feel like they knew her when really, they knew nothing at all. It wasn’t easy, hiding yourself away, she had always been in the spotlight. Her parents were socialites, a scientist and a fashion designer, and she herself became a fashion icon at sixteen, an Avenger at nineteen. Janet’s costume was originally red and silver, to match Hank’s, but she soon enough switched to bright yellow and black, the colour of wasps. The tabloids said it was to match her bright personality, if only they knew. People often asked, “Why ‘The Wasp’? People tend not to like wasps. Bumblebees are black and yellow, people like bumblebees.” Janet often just smiled, why wouldn’t she have picked ‘The Wasp’? Wasps were angry, they stung when provoked; and that was two things that people didn’t really know about Janet – she was angry and she stung, if provoked.

Janet was full of rage, something she hid very well. When her father was murdered, it wasn’t grief that took over, it was anger, an anger that was directed mostly towards herself. She should’ve been there. She should’ve helped. Maybe he’d be alive if she had of been there. She’d only ever shared these thoughts with Hank, who had informed her that she probably would’ve been killed too. Janet sighed, making out as though she agreed, that he was right, and so she dropped the subject. But, that didn’t mean she dropped her rage. Once or twice, she had been provoked enough to nearly end the lives of her enemies, and each time, she managed to pull herself back. However, she feared there would be a day where she would cross the line, and murder her enemies in cold blood. 

Still, no one knew this. She had wormed her way in with every single Avenger, seen them at their most vulnerable, and comforted them accordingly but something they could all vouch for, was that they had never seen Janet break. They didn’t know about the mornings she would wake with a tear soaked pillow or how catching a whiff of her mother’s perfume made her stomach churn with grief. They didn’t know that the reason she couldn’t stand coffee was because it reminded her of her father or she lived every waking moment through a mask of joy. Despite how bad many of her nights were, when she woke up, she managed to smack on a new face, skipping down to breakfast while humming a tune, as if she hadn’t been falling apart a few hours prior. 

The public loved her. She had earned the title of ‘America’s Sweetheart’ and she wore it with pride. They were happy enough to learn about her latest collection, her daily routine and her favourite type of shoe but the minute she opened her mouth to talk about something important, something she felt passionate about, they shut her down. She was meant to be a doll, something nice to look at, someone to cheer on while she fought aliens and whatever else attacked earth, she wasn’t meant to be opinionated. “You’re too influential,” people would tell her, “Little girls look up to you, they want to relate to you. They can’t relate if you’re talking politics.” Oh, those little girls, how people underestimated them. If they were going to look up to her, Janet wanted to give them a good reason to. Not because she was pretty or fashionable but because she stood for something, because she wanted to make a change, because she was a CEO of two companies, because she did it all on her own. But that wasn’t what they wanted, they didn’t want to hear her if she wasn’t talking about the simple things in life, so Janet kept quiet.

Janet’s life wasn’t rainbows and sunshine but she pretended it was. She tiptoed around herself like she was walking on a tightrope, like the slightest move would send her flying off, plummeting towards the abyss. The day she did break, came as a shock to everyone who surrounded her. They couldn’t understand how someone so happy, so put together, could be hiding such pain. The morning started off the same as any other; the Avengers were sat in the kitchen together, having breakfast, or well, trying to. Tony was too busy tinkering with a toy to touch his food, Natasha and Clint were tossing grapes at each other, Steve was reading the newspaper (he never did join everyone else in reading the news online), Thor was on his third cup of coffee and Bruce and Hank had their noses buried in plans for some new invention. Janet stood by the counter, observing them as she made her tea. It was always strange to her how a group of people who were so different could come together to form a family. That’s what they were to her, her family.   
Janet placed her mug of tea to the side and opened up the cupboard to grab some cereal. Someone, one of the taller Avengers no doubt, had placed the Lucky Charms on the very top shelf and Janet scowled, there was no way she could reach them. Not wanting to disturb her friends, she started to jump to try snatch the box, but after three failed attempts, gave up. Janet marched over to the corner where they kept a stool and used it to climb onto the counter top so she could grab the cereal box. However, just as she moved to take the box, she knocked over her mug of tea, causing the hot liquid to spill over her bare thigh as the mug went crashing down towards the floor and exploded into lots of tiny pieces. The others looked over at her and Janet cursed, grabbing a kitchen towel to wipe the burning liquid off of her leg. 

“Jan, do you want some help?”

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t even sure who had asked the question. Her mind was spinning. She clambered off of the counter top and crouched down to pick up the shards of the ceramic mug. As she was scooping it up, she sliced her hand on a jagged edge and once she caught sight of the blood, broke down into a sob. Not because of the loss of her tea or the pain from her burned leg or sliced hand, that just happened to be the last straw. It was strange how the littlest thing could finally make you snap. In an instant, the others were by her side, a mishmash of voices, none of which she could make out very well through her heart-wrenching sobs. Subconsciously, she had curled up, as if being smaller meant she could hide from their gazes but soon enough, someone scooped her up. It took her a moment to identify the scooper as Steve, mainly because she recognised his muscles from having studied them so much. He carried her towards the couch where he sat, holding her in his lap and rubbing circles on her back as Natasha returned with the first aid kit to bandage up her hand. Meanwhile, Janet kept crying. 

Hank crouched next to her, gently rubbing a salve onto her thigh, which was a dark shade of red from being burned and Clint walked in with a fresh cup of tea, which he held until she was ready to take it. Tony stood behind the couch, running his fingers through her hair like her parents used to when she was upset, the perks of growing up with Tony Stark around, he knew what calmed her. Thor and Bruce, stood slightly off to the side, looking rather confused and helpless, they didn’t know how to make it better. Once she was fixed up, she carefully took the cup of tea from Clint in her hand that wasn't damaged and took a long sip. Everything was silent for a moment. Janet hated silence. Thankfully, Tony finally piped up.

“I take it you weren’t crying because you spilled your tea.”

Janet’s bottom lip started to quiver and feeling finally useful, Thor launched forward with a tissue. Janet took it from him with a shaky hand and clutched it tightly, just in case she needed it. Taking in a deep breath, Janet finally confided in her friends what she had been so scared about anyone finding out: how she never really felt happy, how she spent most nights in tears, how she wasn’t sure how she was meant to get better. They listened to her intently and Janet didn’t know why she was so surprised. They were her friends, her family, of course they were going to listen. Truthfully, Janet couldn’t remember why she was so scared to tell them in the first place. Maybe it was because she didn’t want them to think she was weak. 

Things didn’t change instantly, venting about her problems didn’t magically fix things but it did make them easier to deal with. They convinced her to talk a professional and to stop hiding behind a mask of happiness. She had her days where things were bad and she didn’t pretend they were good. She started to speak up, not caring what people thought, and gradually over time, things did change. Janet became happier, less angry, more confident and in a way, she felt closer to her team than ever before. As time moved on, Janet learned to keep less secrets. The whole world still didn’t know her and they never would but she was perfectly content with that.


End file.
